In conventional photofinishing laboratories a user (sometimes referenced as a customer), delivers one or more film rolls carrying corresponding exposed films, to a processing laboratory to have them chemically developed and hardcopies of the images (such as paper prints or slides) prepared. The user can include an individual or a retail store. Individual films are often spliced together end to end to form a larger roll which is easily handled by automated equipment. Following chemical processing of the roll to yield permanent images from the latent images on the films, each image is scanned at high speed to obtain image characteristics, such as color and density. These characteristics are passed to an optical printer which uses the characteristic data to adjust exposure conditions (such as exposure time, color balance, and the like) of an image frame on the developed film which is optically projected onto a photosensitive paper. The exposed photosensitive paper is then chemically developed to yield the final hardcopy prints. When the customer order is completed, each film is cut into strips (for 35 mm film) or reattached to a film cassette (for Advanced Photo System films), the exposed paper (when prints are made) is cut into individual prints, and the film, completed prints and any other media (such as a disk bearing scanned images, or mounted slides) are packaged at a finishing station and the order is then complete.
In modern photofinishing laboratory, images may optionally also be scanned to provide an image signal corresponding to each image on the film. These image signals are usually stored on a medium such as a magnetic or optical disk and provided to the customer, or made available to the customer over a network such as the Internet, and may be used then or at a later time to provide a hardcopy output. Recently it has been described that in the foregoing type of photofinishing operation, the optical printer can be replaced with a digital printer which will print the images directly from the scanned data, following enhancements or other manipulations to the scanned images.
Photofinishing laboratories using scanners and digital printers provide more versatility in correcting or enhancing (either automatically or in accordance with customer requests) customer images, and providing multiple forms of outputs. The corrections or enhancements can be done in accordance with appropriate algorithms operating in one or more image processors. However, for such digital photofinishing laboratories to produce outputs which are comparable to conventional optical prints can require resolutions of at about 2000 by 2000 pixels or more. Thus, each uncompressed consumer image can readily result in a file of about 12 or more megabytes in size. In photofinishing laboratories, images can readily be scanned from customer orders at a rate of 200 images per minute or greater. This means that the laboratory must be able to route image data rates from scanners to image processors and to printers, in the multiple gigabyte or higher per minute rate. One approach to handling such image data, is merely to queue image data in front of a digital processor which receives the images one by one and allocates them to the next available image processor for digital corrections and/or enhancements. A disadvantage of such a configuration is that the images must be communicated to the allocating digital processor which must next pass the images at the high image data rates to the image processors. This sequence of multiply transferring the same images requires an allocation processor with high data transfer rates and slows the ability of the allocation device to determine which output device is available for the next image in its queue. Furthermore, since multiple image processors typically share the same communication network with the allocation processor and the scanner, multiple image transfers will generally slow communication rates on the network. These problems can be exacerbated when customers request multiple complex different image products from one or more images in an order, such as images on T-shirts, cups, calendars, or similar items or other image outputs, such as upload of digital image signals to the Internet, or an optical or magnetic disk carrying the images signals. Since different image processing may be required for such different image products, these additional requests can require even further image transfers on the network.
It would be desirable then, to provide in a photofinishing laboratory, a means by which image data transfers can be kept low so as to maintain high image data transfer rates when required. It would further be desirable that a means can be provided where images can be allocated and transferred to one or more image processors from the capturing device or storage device, without requiring an allocating processor which must receive and communicate the high volume image data itself.